Michael Vaughan gets the good vibes flowing

Vibe alive: Michael Vaughan predicted run prior to Lord's Test

By Simon Briggs

12:01AM BST 19 May 2008

After Michael Vaughan's ropey start to the summer, there had been plenty of recent speculation over his form, focus and future. But the man himself is not given to self-doubt. At Monday's Vodafone dinner, he boldly predicted: "I'm going to make a hundred at Lord's."

Vaughan's ability as a soothsayer almost matches up to his talent as a batsman. He has had these flashes of certainty before, most notably in the lead-up to his comeback match at Headingley last year. "I was driving the car and just felt I had a hundred in me," he said then. "It was almost like it was destiny."

This time, it was Vaughan's visit to Lord's on Monday that got the good vibes flowing. The famous wooden honours-board on the dressing-room wall lists every century and five-wicket haul in Tests on this ground. And his five previous appearances on it were enough to bring some happy memories flooding back.

"It seems very surreal that you get these feelings," Vaughan said. "You walk into the dressing-room and see your name on the board five times, and it gives you a huge lift. It was no surprise that when I went into the middle, I was very relaxed. I knew that it could happen as long as I was disciplined with my shot selection."

For all his inner convictions, there was little in Vaughan's first half-hour at the crease that suggested the workings of a higher power. He was squared up several times, and often went groping for balls around off stump. For a while, it was hard to tell whether he was waving or drowning. But then Tim Southee offered him a life-buoy, cunningly disguised in the shape of a leg-side half-volley. Vaughan climbed into it, and suddenly he was away.

Lordly. That is how Alastair Cook described Vaughan's strokeplay last week, in a column revealing the captain's habit of preening himself over his most elegant shots. Some people might consider this to be an arrogant trait, but in Vaughan's case, it is little more than honesty. When in full flow, he is simply one of the best sights in sport. His stroke production is so perfect that you might be reluctant to use it in a coaching video, for fear of intimidating the students.

Vaughan's signature shot is the cover-drive, but yesterday the New Zealanders gave him only a couple of chances to use it. The majority of his 11 boundaries were flicked through the on side with silky timing, though there was one memorable late-cut off Daniel Vettori - a stroke that most thought had died out around the same time as the plague.

Vaughan is just that sort of player. Even when dressed in England's radical new ClimaCool kit (so white, it almost qualifies as coloured clothing), he still looks like a throwback to a more classical age, when pipes and cloth caps dominated the terraces. The ghosts of previous England captains, from Wally Hammond to Peter May, can almost be glimpsed around the ground.

There was one element of the modern game that intruded on this picturesque scene. Reports in some Sunday newspapers had suggested that English cricket's multi-million dollar deal with Sir Allen Stanford was back in the balance because the England players were unhappy about the "winner takes all" concept.

Only six of the 12 centrally contracted players have established themselves in the international Twenty20 team, and the others are understood to be lobbying for a share of the profits. But Vaughan said that he had not been involved in any negotiations, and was concentrating on the Test match at hand.